


all my enemies are turning into my teachers

by dabblingDilettante



Category: She-Ra and the Princesses of Power
Genre: Character Study, Child Abuse, F/F, Memory Loss
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-23
Updated: 2018-11-23
Packaged: 2019-08-26 02:28:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,635
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16673020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dabblingDilettante/pseuds/dabblingDilettante
Summary: It could bring disaster.  The world could end.  Warnings and excited declarations.It doesn't matter much to Catra.  Her world's already ended.





	all my enemies are turning into my teachers

**Author's Note:**

> I started writing this before I saw any She-ra because the moment I heard about Adora and Catra, I thought of Revolutionary Girl Utena and Nanami. Ikuhara gave a little comment on one of Nanami's episodes once. It went something like - everyone needs to hear in their life, at least once, that no one else will do but them. If you can hear those words, you can go through anything. "She's waiting for those words too."
> 
> "To not be chosen is to die." Everyone has their own End of the World. Catra's not a black rose duelist, though. She's a little more than that. Witch or princess, any girl can have her way.

Adora was the one who was assigned the top bunk.

Looking back on it, Catra would say - of course.  No one but miss perfect would have anything but the top.  But as children, hardly old enough to read, it's different.  Catra sat with her legs bowed in the air, staring at the girl in front of her, staring at how she stared at the bunk above.

"Having trouble?" Catra says.

"...No," Adora says.

In Hordak's army, people don't show weakness.  They don't ask for help.  Catra giggles into her hands.  It's all so funny.  If she could stop laughing, she might not get in trouble so much.  But that's not her personality, just like it's not the personality of Adora to be anything less than what people want of her.

"I could teach you how to jump," Catra says, "If you had something worthwhile to trade."

Adora's gaze drops toward her.  "You can make it up there?"  Looking at her - looking her in the eye.  

"Well, duh."  Catra closes her eyes, swings her head away.  "It's nothing special."

"Can you show me?"

Adora has already slammed her hands on Catra's bed, leaning in close enough for Catra to see the specks of dirt encrusted on her face.  She's grimy, she stinks, but - her eyes are shining.  A second ago, they were steel gray, but now, they were the strangest shade Catra had ever seen.  The Fright Zone was all neon green, silvered brown, choking purple.  It would take years and books for her to have the word for Adora's sky blue eyes.

"I'm not teaching you for nothing!" Catra yowls, rolling back against the wall.

"No, I don't care about being taught.  I couldn't jump that far if my life depended on it!"  Adora laughs and she doesn't close the distance.  Almost like she can sense Catra's distaste.  Instead, she sits on the bed, and does something worse - she keeps eye contact.  "But I'd love to see if you could actually do it."

Catra unwinds, like a steel trap ready to close, and smiles.  "That sounds like a bet."

"Well, I dunno.  Just seems a bit far for a baby like you."

The way Adora smiles will draw Catra in for years to come.  The first of many.

Catra's tail wraps around the backboard, and her arms come out, sleek and sharp.  So young, curled up, she looked like a weightless ball.  She can feel Adora's wide eyes on her as she pops her feet off the wall and digs her nails into the top bunk.  Adora falls over the bed to look up, trying to track after Catra, but Catra leans over the other edge.

"Boo."

Adora doesn't get scared.  "Do you have some kind of magic?"  She's closer than before.  Catra doesn't pull away this time.  "Like Shadow Weaver does?"

"No," Catra spits.  "No," a little quieter.  "No, my jumps are way cooler than a few light tricks."

Adora laughs.  Catra's heart swells, some tiny foolish bit.  "No way!" Adora says.

Catra twists her mouth into a grin.  Upside down, it doesn't look like she's about to cry.

 

\--

 

"What are you doing sleeping in the same bed as her?"

"S-she's the one sleeping in my bunk, Shadow Weaver."

Catra is frozen in place.  It's bad luck.  Adora left early, today.  Trying to get a good seat for the two of them for breakfast.  Like that slop was more important than a few more seconds hidden away together.

"You think that matters?  I don't care if you were assigned to sleep in the dirt.  Don't interfere with Adora."

"Y-yes," Catra says, tongue too frozen to stick out at her.

Love is not a word Catra knows for years.  Hate is one she learns much faster.  It is easier to cling to what one is so intimately familiar with.

 

\--

 

"I'm sorry," Adora says.

Catra doesn't confide the full story.  But it's evident, when Adora comes back, as Catra is still frozen in a sea of red-hot anger.  Adora pulls Catra to their bed,  _their_ bed, because Shadow Weaver couldn't make Catra do anything, and helps her stretch her arms till her muscles no longer tense and her claws can retract.

"I guess you should have taken those lessons from me after all," Catra says.

"I don't have to sleep in your bed," Adora says.  "I'll sleep on the floor.  I'll ..."  She trails off.  "Don't get in trouble for my sake, Catra."

"Shadow Weaver will always find a way to blame me."  Catra shrugs and leans against Adora.  "And admit it.  You can't sleep without something to cuddle, you baby."

"That was one time!"

And they're already laughing again.

It's easier to laugh.  It's easier when it's funny.

 

\--

 

The black garnet is always on.  Entrapta's first experiment didn't go as intended, but it had still become the Hoard's newest power source.  Lord Hordak probably liked the fact that it made their weapons more viable.  Catra just liked that it meant they didn't have to siphon off energy from central heating anymore.

"You know much about the garnet's powers?" Catra asks, lazy walk around the room.

"Only as much as Scorpia's told me.  Oh, and all of this too," Entrapta says without turning, dropping tape recorders out of her pockets.  "All of its major powers are connected to the earth itself and one could theorize it could link back to Scorpia's heritage but considering her powers were never linked to the gem, she wouldn't find much use in it herself, and we can -"

"Yeah," Catra interrupts.  "Sure can."

"That shadow lady sure got a lot out of it though, if she was just willing to tell me about her work, I know I could do so much more!"

Catra snickers.  "I'm sure she'd be so willing to help us out now.  It's probably for the best.  Her powers were child's play in comparison to what we're doing."

It's an instant of regret, and a flash of discomfort, as Entrapta is in Catra's face.  It takes her a second to see purple instead of blue.  "What all do you know about her powers?"

"Chill out."  Catra side-steps Entrapta's hair and leans against the wall.  "I just grew up with her.  It was all, 'Oh, look, I'm a spooky shadow lady' and 'ooo, kitty cat, you should really be scared of the dark.'  She could use the stone to freeze people in place, but you already experienced that.  And go through portals to mess with people's minds."  Her vision blurs.  "She was good at being everywhere.  ...And I heard she could erase memories.  But who knows if that was true or if she was just bluffing."

"Interesting."  Entrapta's notes trail onto the floor, ripping pages out the moment one is full, until she swings back to her station.  "That could just work!"

"What could work," Catra mutters.  Her head hurts.  The headache.  The fatigue.  She's used to it.  Has to be.

"Portals!" Entrapta sings.  "If we can use something similar, we could use water to go to anywhere."  Her hair pulls down the face guard as she turns around, hint of a wild smile in her voice.  "Or anywhen."

 

\--

 

It doesn't look like much of a machine.

"I fashioned it after that little set-up Shadow Weaver had in her old chamber!  It didn't come together very well until I got the right geometry, apparently the reflection of the light was a really important part in breaking through, but I managed it!  You can't just jump in, but you can send in yourself, it doesn't actually take magic once you have the portal set up, so go nuts!"

Catra hardly hears Entrapta.

"You mean I can ... go anywhere?"

"You can do anything you can imagine with it!  Just let me know what happens when you do, I couldn't stand not knowing what happens, I have to make sure to document everything, so don't forget a detail!  I'm particularly excited about the time distortion, I've never measured such a thing before, I'm so excited to see the metrics!"

"Yeah," Catra says.  "Yeah."

 

\--

 

Adora's 12.

One of her teeth are missing.  She says it happened while sparring, but Catra keeps the secret that she accidentally kicked Adora in the face while they were sleeping one night.  The two of them woke up to blood coating her pillow and it was more of a shock than the fact that swallowing a tooth while asleep hadn't woken Adora up.

Catra thought she remembered it better than this.

She's 12 and outgrowing the stupid army onesie they'd all been given.  Catra's still stuck in her old one when Adora gets the next size up, filled with holes and blood stains.  Catra remembers being jealous, remembers her face twisting up when Adora first puts on the jacket.  How the belt fits around her waist and cuts her shoulders broad.  She doesn't remember - 

"Adora."  The anger in Shadow Weaver's voice.  "I thought I told you not to give your clothes to trash."

"She needed something," Adora's desperation.  "I had plenty!  Why can't Catra have a jacket too?"

"Different people require different tools.  Different places."  Shadow Weaver is pitch black, sharp scarlet, draining the walls of color.  "I have told you this many times.  People only receive so much as they have worked for."

"Catra has worked for this," Adora yells.  "I can do what I want with my belongings.  Catra's given me plenty!  I think she deserves it."

"Foolish child."  The gentle whisper is worse.  "You do not yet understand the ways of this world.  Your little pet was never meant for anything."

"She's not my pet!"  

"She is a toy and you will learn to get rid of her when Lord Hordak demands it of you."

"He wouldn't-"

Red electricity shuts Adora down.  "You know so little of the world, Adora."  A sigh escapes Shadow Weaver's mask.  "Every time I think you may be prepared to accept the truth, we go through this again."

Catra's blood runs cold.

"I do grow so tired of removing these pesky affections.  A leftover of your dead parents, I suppose."

Adora's screams are muffled, but they are not fearful.  They are angry - she looks so determined, and Catra can't stand to look at her.  

"Don't blame me if you misplace certain memories.  But I will not allow you backtalk me in such a way.  If you will not remember my lessons, you will have to give something up in return."

The room flashes - red so vibrant it is like blood leaking out Adora's ears.  Her eyes dim.  Shadow Weaver keeps a tight grasp on Adora's head as her fingers splay and shake.  When it is over.  When Shadow Weaver is done.  Adora falls to the ground like bricks.  Catra's body screams at her.  Jump through.  Go through.  Kill that - kill -

"I will have what I want," Shadow Weaver says - interrupting Catra's thoughts.

The shadows lift Adora into the air and carry her away.

A cold laugh burns Catra's throat.

 

\--

 

Adora is young.

She's old enough to walk in this time.  However, not all her teeth are grown in.  Strangest of all - Catra doesn't remember this.  Her head burns with fuzzy confusion.  It's like a maze her legs know, but a map she's never seen.  Watching Adora watching her, young her, makes her feel the peculiar familiarity of vomit.  Hands on her head.  Hate.

"This is my bunk," Catra says, pushing at Adora. 

It is not so hard that Adora falls, but it is enough to convince her to push back, till the two of them have fallen over one another into one rambling lump.

"It's too big for just one person," Adora says, arms stretched out over Catra.  "I'm doing you a favor, you should thank me."

"Yeah, thanks for stinking up the place!  I could smell you a mile away!"

The two of them are laughing.  Outside the time, outside the place, Catra leans over the side of her portal.  Likely, acid is disintegrating her insides.  Intestines fallen out the open hole in her stomach.  If Entrapta was in the room, maybe she'd get one of her robots to stitch her up with a new metal plate.  Make her mechanical.  Upgrade her.  Fix her.  Change her.  Make her understand why she was falling through when she was standing right there over children that were and were not her and the only person that ever mattered.

"Shadow Weaver wants to see us today."

"Yeah, well, she can go suck an egg."

"Ew," Adora laughs.  "What's an egg?"

"The stuff you're born from, dummie."

The two of them go hand-in-hand.  Catra yells at the portal before she knows what she's doing - "Don't!"  Entrapta and Scorpia glance up from their corner of the room, too curious, like it's a joke to glance in on.  Catra sweeps a hand toward them.  "Just get out!"

They shrug.

But Catra still sees the two children going to their fate like fools, like lambs to the slaughter.  If she jumped through.  If she stopped them - she could stop Shadow Weaver then and there and the witch could never touch a child again, and it would be so easy.  Now.  As she was.

As she is.

Catra slumps to the ground and pushes the portal over.  Entrapta is only slightly upset that she has to build a new one.

 

\--

 

"Don't you want to use it?" Catra asks Entrapta.

"No!" Entrapta says, smile wider with her hair behind her.  "I couldn't care less about using it, I just want to see what it does.  What effect it has on our present day!  Also how it affects food that travels through, I need to know if it changes the chemical composition or the physical distortion of it, I really want to find a more efficient way to find tiny food."

"Isn't there anything you'd ... change?"  Catra tries to be sly - and she's good at it.  "If you'd change how the princesses left you here ..."

"Oh, no!  Not at all."  Entrapta grins.  "If I hadn't joined the alliance, I wouldn't have come here.  I wouldn't have even thought about it!  I was a total shut-in.  But then I got here, and I went to that social experiment, and I met you, and then you kidnapped Adora's friends, and then we went to kidnap them, and then everyone abandoned me here for their own sake and I got to build all kinds of amazing robots!"  Her eyes shine and it's familiar.  Sickening.  "So why would I change anything?  Other than maybe what underwear I put on yesterday morning, or what I ate on Wednesday, maybe, it didn't sit too well on my stomach."

Catra shakes her head.  "What about you, Scorpia?"

"Oh, me?  I uh ... well, I mean, I thought it's just nice to be here with you too!"

"Nothing embarrassing you'd change?"  Catra raises an eyebrow.

Scorpia crosses her arms, a little too much thought.  "Well, I figure that whatever I've done that's embarrassing is the entire reason that I'm here now, and if I just changed something, where would I be?  I might just cease to exist.  Or maybe everything would still be the same.  Anyway, I think I'm pretty well off.  I'm here now, aren't I?"

"And don't forget!  If we start changing things willy-nilly, we might just end up screwing up the whole timeline!  Not only could people start disappearing, the whole universe could start to turn inside out!"  Entrapta's hair snakes up Catra's legs, quick as Catra side-steps it.  "Before you know it, butterflies turn into hornets and the sea turns into milk.  Or anything else!  The world could end," she says with all the excitement of a child who had just been given extra slop for dinner.

"Wow.  I'm so concerned," Catra says.

"I know!  Isn't it exciting?"

Scorpia and Entrapta's smiles and laughter make Catra laugh too.  Laugh.  Cold and hollow and far away.

 

\--

 

Adora's - Catra doesn't know how old.  Her hair's hardly grown in.  She's so small it makes Catra's hands twitch.  It's not anything.  Not anything Catra knows.  People are talking over the baby in the crib, people in shimmering clothes, bright and warm.

"They're targeting her," one says.  "They'll kill all of us just to have her."

"And they will, before we give her up."

Catra's claws dig into her palms.

Here she is.  So close.

The people leave.  Ghost away into nothing as sparks fly outside, the sound of a bomb dropping shunts through the window.  Slipping through the water is more of a mental thing.  But as Catra sinks in, she feels like her skin is peeling off, new flesh drying the instant her feet touch the floor.  It's carpeted.  Softer than the bed she's shared with Adora all this time.  Catra feels the bile in her throat and she leans over the crib.  Her claws rip through the sides.

"I could be done with you here."

Her eyes are so fucking blue.  Worse so when she's a child.  Maybe it's just the Fright Zone that did it.  Sucked out all the color.  Her jaw hurts, clenched so tight, her head splits.

"You don't even know me," Catra whispers.

The baby's head tilts.  Curious instead of crying.  It should be crying.  It should be screaming in fear from the sounds outside, not cooing, not taking the sight of her killer in with such ease.  Catra's throat itches with a scream.

It comes out as a sob.

"Why does everyone want you so much."  Her eyes burn.  "Why does the world want you so much!"  Her throat tears open, palms bleeding against the sides of the crib.  "When I ... when I ..."  Adora's eyes, wide and curious, burn her skin.  "When no one wants me."  

The baby gurgles.

"You die here.  She-ra doesn't come back.  Shadow Weaver never has anything to compare me to."  Catra snorts.  Laughing.  The greatest joke.  "God, look at me.  I can't even imagine not getting taken in by the Hoard."  She sniffles and stretches into the crib.  Her blood is brighter against Adora's skin.  Seeping into Adora's tiny baby clothes.  Standing against the lights blasting outside the window, her shadow overtakes the room.  "What would I be without you."

Catra hums along gunfire and explosions.  The Hoard cometh, the Hoard taketh away.  So on, so forth.  "You know, they'll keep doing this regardless of what I do here.  I could always put you back down, but someone will break in and start screaming and then you'll just start crying.  I mean, you are just a baby."  Catra laughs.  This time, the baby does too.  Tears burn her eyes.  "Shadow Weaver must have gotten so pissed off!  No matter what she did, we always became friends again.  Like, out of instinctual spite.  That's teamwork if I've ever seen it."  She sits against the wall, baby Adora propped against her gut.  

Adora is fated to be She-ra.

There is a thought in her head, disconnected and illegal, worming its way into her hopes.  "I wonder if we'll keep doing this forever.  Forgetting."  Linked.  "Getting back together."  Meant to be.  "Getting torn apart and doing the same thing all over again."  She laughs again.  "Well.  Guess it's too bad I don't plan on forgetting ever again."

Trilling away, Adora blows a snot bubble.  It pops in her face and she screams.

"That scares you?"  Catra can't get rid of her rye smile.  

The baby can't respond.  Can't really do anything.  Catra could wring her neck and jump out before anyone found the body.

"Did you know ... it's pretty hard to be second best?"  Her head thumps against the wall.  "Probably the hardest thing in the world.  ...no one can maintain it forever.  Some people just give up.  They usually died.  I don't think you ever realized that was happening, but it was.  When Irina left?  Yeah, she was dead.  Sorry to tell you now.  But ...yeah.  Some idiots decide that they'll rebel or change.  Like that'll help them get a leg up in life."  Catra snorts.  "They died too.  But ... it's not so bad, if at least one person is looking at you.  Because then there's one person who thinks you're the best.  Only you'll do, for them."

There's shouting outside, now.  People close to the house.  Catra stares at Adora's room.  Constellations are burned into the ceiling.  The edges glow in spite of the lasers outside.  There are wardrobes.  Clouds painted into the walls.  There were plans, here, over a decade ago.  Plans to raise a child.  Intent to give love and protection.  Of course, the door had the worst of it all.  The illustration of the sword and that fake language written into the bottom.

Eternia.

"But it was all bullshit," Catra says.  "I was just the temporary one."  Everything in the world - everything in Catra's world - could be determined by a cot and a doodle drawn into the side.  But here was Adora's world.  Endless.  Unknowable.  Rejecting Catra's very existence.  "It's good though."

Catra smiles down at Adora.

"Because of you, I learned the only person who would make me matter was me."

 

\--

 

Shadow Weaver thinks she is the only one who knows that the baby forewarned to become She-ra was left at the border of the Fright Zone without a word.

There are two children who are attached at the hip.

Always sharing a bed, no matter what she does.  She can't win.  Can't beat them.  She knocks them down.  The two of them hold each other up like gods, tear each other down as people, until they make it to the end.  It's not fate.  It's spite.  It's not love.  It's hate.

Over a decade later, Catra leans back in her quarters, and laughs like someone told her the funniest joke in the world.

**Author's Note:**

> Catra threatens a baby, the fic. 
> 
> Dude when i started this fic it was just me sobbing into a document and this came out of nowhere. thanks She-Ra for like. everything i want out of a fucked up sad meaty pitch-flushed romantic black comedy. anyway. title taken from a lyric of "Truth" by Alexander Ebert. "Say you're my lover, say you're my homie / Tilt my chin back, slit my throat / Take a bath in my blood, get to know me / All out of my secrets / All my enemies are turning into my teachers"


End file.
